A (mostly) music blog, with a slightly left of center take on everything from music to politics to religion to pop-culture from the heartland.

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Favorite Song by the Album: The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones formed in 1983 in Boston,
MA and nearly single handedly (well them
and Fishbone) created the sub-genre ska punk/ska-core when they began mixing
elements of punk, hardcore, ska, and metal.
The band released their debut record Devil’s
Night Out in 1989 on Taang Records.
They stayed one Taang for one more full-length and an EP before signing
to Mercury Records in 1993, where the band stayed through 2000’s Pay Attention. In 2002 the band released A Jackknife to a Swan on SideOneDummy
Records. The band went on hiatus for a
few years in the middle on the first decade of the 21st century
before reforming and releasing records in 2009 and 2011 on their own label Big
Rig Records.

I first the Bosstones in 1991/92 on the Chuckwagon edition
of the alternative music show The Underground Circus broadcast on a community
radio station out of Tampa, FL. The show
had started playing the band’s covers of Areosmith’s “Sweet Emotions” and
Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” from the Where’d
You Go? EP. From that moment I was
hooked. I picked up Don’t Know How to Party shortly after it was released and
subsequently tracked down copies of More
Noise and Other Disturbances and Ska-Core,
the Devil, and More. When Question the Answers’ was released in
1994 I picked it up immediately and was blown away. The band made a stop in OKC on the Question
the Answers tour, playing a show at a long-gone club called The Roxy on Meridian
Ave. The
show was fantastic and included my one, sad attempt at stage diving. In 1996 ska and ska punk broke with band’s
like No Doubt scoring huge hits. The
Bosstones’ next record, 1997’s Let’s Face
It, capitalized on ska’s newly found popularity and became the band’s most
commercially successful album.
Admittedly at the time I didn’t pick up Let’s Face It, but did love the lead single “The Impression That I
Get.” I didn’t pick up anything by the
Bosstones until 2002’s A Jackknife to a
Swan, which I was not impressed with at all. As it turns out, there had been some lineup
changes since Let’s Face It and the
band lost guitarist Nate Albert and trombonist/vocalist Dennis Brockenborough. This change in personnel drastically changed
the band’s sound, taking them from sounding like an innovative group to
sounding like one of the bands that they had inspired.

For this post I am focusing on the band’s material through Let’s Face It since from that point on I
have not followed the band’s releases and what little I have heard did not
impress me.

About Me

I am a father of two amazing kids, the insanity behind the Oklahoma Lefty blog, and a lover of puck rock, pro wrestling, and comic books.
*Disclaimer* My opinions are my own and do not reflect that of my employer (past, present, or future), any organization that I may belong to or support, or anything/anyone other than me.